Dietmar Dietrich

Demand Side Management: Demand Response, Intelligent Energy Systems, and Smart Loads

Energy management means to optimize one of the most complex and important technical creations that we know: the energy system. While there is plenty of experience in optimizing energy generation and distribution, it is the demand side that receives increasing attention by research and industry. Demand Side Management (DSM) is a portfolio of measures to improve the energy system at the side of consumption. It ranges from improving energy efficiency by using better materials, over smart energy tariffs with incentives for certain consumption patterns, up to sophisticated real-time control of distributed energy resources. This paper gives an overview and a taxonomy for DSM, analyzes the various types of DSM, and gives an outlook on the latest demonstration projects in this domain.

Communication and Computation in Buildings: A Short Introduction and Overview

Building automation (BA) and smart homes (SHs) have traditionally not been a unified field but varied by their origins, legal foundations, different applications, different goals, and national funding programs for basic research. Only within the last years that an international common focus appeared. The following overview gives not only an introduction into the topic of BA but also the distinction to other areas of automation, in which networks of the field level (the sensor and actuator level) play an important role. Finally, the scientific challenges will be mentioned. SHs are referred to when the differences to BA have to be explicitly stressed. This paper is an introduction for the special IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics section on BA and shall introduce the reader to this new topic. BA not only has a huge economic potential but also is of significant academic interest today.

Simulating the Mind: A Technical Neuropsychoanalytical Approach

Can psychoanalysis offer a new computer model? Can computer designers help psychoanalysts to understand their theory better?In contemporary publications human psyche is often related to neural networks. Why? The wiring in computers can also be related to application software. But does this really make sense? Artificial Intelligence has tried to implement functions of human psyche. The reached achievements are remarkable; however, the goal to get a functional model of the mental apparatus was not reached. Was the selected direction incorrect?The editors are convinced: yes, and they try to give answers here. If one accepts that the brain is an information processing system, then one also has to accept that computer theories can be applied to the brains functions, the human mental apparatus. The contributors of this book - Solms, Panksepp, Sloman and many others who are all experts in computer design, psychoanalysis and neurology are united in one goal: finding synergy in their interdisciplinary fields.

Evolution potentials for fieldbus systems

The roots of fieldbus technology are mixed, both classical electrical engineering and computer science contributed their share to the evolution. Typical performance of different fieldbus technologies overlap more and more. Nevertheless striking characteristic features are taking shape. Although on one hand fieldbus technology has meanwhile established itself, on the other hand a large number of problems are still unsettled: the plain ISO/OSI model is no longer sufficient. We have to create new layers to obtain better interoperability. Furthermore, the dramatically increasing complexity of fieldbus applications demands scalable systems. The complexity together with high installation costs make simulations of fieldbus behavior a necessity. Essential driving forces for the development of new concepts come from the area of building automation: the need to reduce the costs of integrating and automating facility management systems, service costs, and the need to reduce energy consumption while at the same time improving its distribution (demand side management systems). The prioritization of real-time data transmission combined with Gigabit switching standards for LANs offers new possibilities. In order to achieve the goals of modern automation, new requirements have to be met: configurable interactions between different fieldbus systems, efficient wireless technologies to increase mobility and facilitate installation, but also plug & play features. A topic of increasing importance are the different possibilities for connections to IP-based LANs, which will partially replace conventional mid-level fieldbus systems. New concepts of implementation, tests and maintenance will make many of today’s concepts obsolete. The

The Evolution of Factory and Building Automation

This article gives an overview of the general concepts, underlying technologies, similarities, and differences in the factory and building automation fields and explores issues and trends. Particular emphasis is put on the information aspects in automation, such as communication and integration, that used to be a central topic during the last few decades and are being addressed by maturing solutions only recently.

A New Model for Autonomous, Networked Control Systems

Existing communication utilities, such as the ISO/OSI model and the associated automation pyramid, have limitations regarding the increased complexity of modern automation systems. The introduction of profiles for fieldbus systems, or field-area networks (FANs), was an important innovation. However, in the foreseeable future the number of FAN nodes in building automation systems is expected to increase drastically. And here the authors see an opportunity to revolutionize the operation of intelligent, autonomous systems based on FANs. The paper introduces a system based on bionic principles to process the information obtained from a large number of diverse sensors. By means of multilevel symbolization, the amount of information to be processed is substantially reduced. A symbolic processing model is introduced that enables the processing of real world information, creates a world representation, and evaluates scenarios that occur in this representation. Two applications involving human actions in a building automation environment are briefly discussed. It is argued that the use of internal symbolization leads to greater flexibility in the case of a large number of sensors, providing the ability to adapt to changing sensor inputs in an intelligent way

Power-Aware System Design of Wireless Sensor Networks: Power Estimation and Power Profiling Strategies

Modern design of wireless devices requires the designers to have a special focus on power consumption to prolong the battery life of the final system. The designer therefore needs power consumption information very early in the process to be able to decide on system parameters, design methods, communication protocols, functionality restrictions. Typically, this is done by running simulations of the system to be developed and performing design space exploration. However, there is a tradeoff between speed and accuracy of simulation, therefore the designer has to be aware of available tools and simulation methods he can choose from to achieve the best possible solution for his case.

Psychoanalytical model for automation and robotics

Research in automation focuses on systems which are capable of solving very complex tasks and problems. Artificial Intelligence and especially Cognitive Science have brought remarkable successes; however, in some areas the boarders of feasibility and further extension are reached. Compared to human intelligence the range of capabilities of the solutions is still modest. In the following we will argue why we see the necessity to introduce a novel approach for creating models, which possibilities and tools computer engineering can offer, why a psychoanalytical template is considered meaningful, and which open problems could be tackled or even broken through with this approach, respectively. The article is based on comprehensive research results in the course of several research projects including a European one. Involved persons originate from a number of research institutions in Austria, South Africa, and Canada.

Demand side management in private homes by using LonWorks

The paper presents a system to distribute power consumption in private homes uniformly over time as well as to reduce total power consumption to meet the interests of the energy producers. We present autonomous and intelligent domestic appliances that communicate with each other. Every electrical device is supported by a built-in LonWorks-Node that incorporates distributed algorithms. The main objectives are to provide logical relations between the devices, and to coordinate the energy consumption policy. All this happens in an autonomous, distributed way without any interaction with the user. The paper elaborates four different algorithms and indicates strategies to save energy in global dimensions.

Cognitive Automation—Survey of Novel Artificial General Intelligence Methods for the Automation of Human Technical Environments

Automation, the utilization of control and information technologies for reducing the need for human intervention in the production process is about to meet Cognition-the science concerned with human thinking-and related sciences. More and more processes require analysis and insights that allow controlling them beyond the mere execution of rules and beyond prefitted controllers in order to automatically keep them within the desired conditions. Automatic and flexible decision making based on challenging conditions such as increasing amounts of information, lacking prior knowledge of data, incomplete, missing or contradicting data, becomes the key challenges for future automation technologies.